According to Hiroyuki Sakamoto, the franchise’s development team, Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio (RGG), was confident that they would create a fun game.

If you think about it, the franchise that used to be called Yakuza and is now called Like A Dragon is an annual franchise, as there has been something every year since 2014, and there have been times when we’ve seen two titles in one year (at least in the West), like this year’s Like A Dragon: Ishin! (which has been out for a decade in Japan…) was followed by the recent release of Like A Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name.

When the launch video for Yakuza (7): Like A Dragon was released on April Fools’ Day 2019, many took it as the joke of the day because it featured turn-based gameplay instead of the long-established brawler style, but RGG wasn’t joking: the main episodes of the franchise were in that style, and Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth, also known as Yakuza 8, will continue in this vein. Sakamoto also revealed a lot about this in an interview with Game Informer:

“RGG Studio’s games are narrative games. We are always thinking about the most enjoyable form of that narrative, which includes combat. For example, one of the reasons we decided to make Yakuza: Like a Dragon an RPG is because we always think flat. In addition to combat, we have also made many types of mini-games, so we are confident that we can make an enjoyable game even if it is in a genre we have never made before. It’s actually hard to find a full-contact fighting action game, so we don’t really have any games to look at for inspiration or reference. On the other hand, we try to draw inspiration from fighting competitions and action movies – a realistic fight where you can feel the pain. There are a lot of action games where various expressions are muted, but we believe there is a catharsis in realistic and painful fighting.

We first considered a hidden gun, like a spy might use, but decided against it for fear of turning the game into a shooter. We also felt that defeating enemies with gadgets alone would be too bland for an action game. In the end, we thought that the best combination was to have Kiryu use gadgets and hit the enemy at the same time, and we thought that this combination of gadgets and hand-to-hand combat would be the most [RGG]-like style,” Sakamoto said, also mentioning Like A Dragon Gaiden.

The future of the franchise looks bright.

Source: PCGamer